


Where Do Ghosts Go?

by Wecanhaveallthree



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-12
Updated: 2020-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:00:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23115877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wecanhaveallthree/pseuds/Wecanhaveallthree
Summary: Sometimes your backpack gets a little stuffy.
Kudos: 20





	Where Do Ghosts Go?

The crack-boom of landers! The hawking of merchants! The cries and gaiety of citizen and Guardian alike! Ah, the City, the Tower, the vibrant, beating, thrumming heart -- the quickened pulse all Lightbearers are intimates of, that hot-flush song that burns and inspires. To that private tune a score of armoured warriors dance, their boots beating stone and steel with the rhythm of life. A hundred eyes follow the knock-about of a plump purple ball.

Under the Traveller’s sleepy sight, the things from the outer reaches of the system can be argued over, squabbled about, reasoned, teased out, made sense of. In private dens, in public bars, in ramen shops, Guardians will speak, think, feel. They who ensure the safety of others can, for an all too brief moment, feel safe themselves.

They pass on their fears, their pain, their road-weariness to friends, comrades, long-suffering bartenders. They forge those dark feelings into understanding. Into hope. Into courage and determination.

So let them have this time. Turn to the bobbing constellation of lights above Eververse’s shuttered windows.

The little ones do not need to speak. They could communicate on other, more ethereal levels. This close to the Traveller, it would feel almost like being part of something greater again, subsuming oneself back into the unfathomable whole. A warm and gentle suicide.

Each of them feels it. So they speak aloud in their clicking, chattering voices, the modulation with which they convey uniqueness, the frequency of distinctiveness. Each speaks to prove that they are still here, still separate, still in control.

What are they looking at, so high up? The angle is impossible for anyone to see from the Courtyard’s main level, the balconies and gangways too fraught and secluded to be the intended target. Tess Everis is not known for her poor business sense or her inefficiency in signage - so, the question begs, for whose benefit is this flickering display?

Look a little closer.

The images are still and clear and change every few seconds. They are, uniformly, of most splendid shapes and colours, each with an accompanying stinger of a tag-line beginning with ‘For Ghosts who…’

So voices ooh- and aah- at each fashion. They pass jabs and jibes -- “Patrolling on Mercury? With _those_ fins?” -- or genuine compliments and suggestions. Sartheno would, indeed, look particularly fetching in that plasma induction shell, the one with all the torsion lines. That buttery yellow would match Isila’s Guardian down to the greaves. There is something for every inclination, every philosophy, every taste or preference.

The lights bob together in front of the screen. For a moment, a brief, blessed, moment, each can silence the siren-song of ultimate belonging. For a moment, the pain of separation is not so sharp, so present.

Come the morning, they will return to where their Guardians have washed up. They will, according to their personalities, sigh, or lecture, or attempt to access City records and transfer Glimmer to cover any outstanding tabs and bills.

Eyes will open blearily in the light of a new day, radiant with dawn, and look upon something new. And that light will change to joy, in each and every heart, at the sight of their oldest friend, their most constant companion.

And perhaps one or two will, in the space between waking and wakefulness, frown slightly, bemused, and ask: “Is there something different about you today?”

Ah, if metal could but blush.


End file.
